Yankees Said to Be Closing Deal to Obtain Rangers Rodriguez

By TYLER KEPNER

Published: February 15, 2004

In a trade that would join the most celebrated franchise in baseball with perhaps the best player in the game, the Yankees and the Texas Rangers have agreed in principle to a deal that would bring Alex Rodriguez to New York for Alfonso Soriano and a player to be determined, according to several people familiar with the discussions. The deal is all but complete, they said.

The commissioner's office and the players union must approve the trade, and the teams were working on administrative details last night, baseball officials said. "It has reached the commissioner's office," said Sandy Alderson, Major League Baseball's executive vice president for baseball operations, who declined further comment.

Rodriguez has seven years and $179 million remaining on the 10-year, $252 million contract he signed in December 2000. The Rangers would include money in the mid-$60 million range that would reduce the Yankees' average annual payments to Rodriguez from $25.5 million to about $16 million.

Rodriguez has performed as the Rangers hoped, leading the American League in home runs in each of the past three seasons and winning the Most Valuable Player award last year. But the Rangers have finished in last place each season and are desperate to shed his contract.

On Oct. 26, about 12 hours after the Yankees lost the World Series to the Florida Marlins, Rangers officials called Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman to gauge his interest in trading for Rodriguez. Irritated by the timing and confident in his own star shortstop, Derek Jeter, Cashman passed.

The Boston Red Sox, bitter rivals of the Yankees, reached their own deal for Rodriguez in December, only to have the trade quashed when the players union rejected the restructuring of Rodriguez's contract. But with more financial might than the Red Sox and the lesson of Boston's failed trade to guide them, the Yankees were privately confident their deal would not fail.

"It is not going that route again," said one person involved in the talks. "That's been clear from the start."

The impetus for the Yankees' deal came on Jan. 16, when third baseman Aaron Boone seriously injured a knee while playing pickup basketball and Cashman could not find a replacement. Rodriguez, sensing an escape from what had become a gilded prison in Texas, decided he would shift from shortstop to third base if the Rangers dealt him to the Yankees.

It was no small concession from Rodriguez, who has won Gold Gloves for fielding excellence at shortstop the past two seasons. But Rodriguez has never played in the World Series, and according to one person familiar with the trade talks, he told the Rangers' owner, Tom Hicks, through an intermediary early last week that he wanted to be traded to the Yankees.

In the Red Sox deal, Hicks had agreed to take on baseball's second-highest-paid player, Manny Ramirez, in return. This deal will save the Rangers more than $100 million. Soriano will make $5.4 million this year and cannot be a free agent until after the 2006 season. The player to be determined will come from a list of five players, probably minor leaguers.

"It's about flexibility," Rangers General Manager John Hart told The Associated Press last night. "We're trading the best player in the game and we're getting tremendous financial flexibility."

The Yankees have virtually overhauled their team from last season. Their starting rotation will be mostly new after the free-agent defections of the veterans Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and David Wells. The lineup will include the newcomers Gary Sheffield, a seven-time All-Star who signed a three-year, $39 million contract, and another outfielder, the five-time All-Star Kenny Lofton.

Now comes Rodriguez, who is scheduled to make $21 million this year, $25 million in 2005 and 2006 and $27 million in each of the four years after that. Rodriguez is the crowning piece in a staggering collection of stars and salaries.

"The more guys they get over there, I just see that place imploding," said an official of another team. "Their payroll could probably go to $300 million, and the owner wouldn't care."

After three years without a championship, the Yankees' principal owner, George Steinbrenner, has assumed greater control of personnel moves, authorizing a payroll that could top $180 million. Even so, Cashman on Friday referred to the Yankees as underdogs in the A.L. East.

"Obviously, the favorite appears to be Boston," Cashman said. "They're the team Vegas is picking and everyone else seems to have crowned as the team to beat. I look forward to seeing if we can channel some of that in our favor."

With Rodriguez, the Yankees would seem to be a strong favorite to repeat as division champions for the seventh year in a row. The Red Sox are chasing them again.

"We recognize that the Yankees are a more formidable team as a result of this trade," Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox' president, said last night. "But we've long maintained that we are hungry underdogs. So I guess what this means is we're a little bit more hungry and a little bit more of an underdog."

The Red Sox lost in the seventh game of the A.L. Championship Series last fall when Boone homered in the 11th inning. Boston has since acquired an ace starter, Curt Schilling, and a premier closer, Keith Foulke. But Boone's injury has indirectly hurt the Red Sox again.

"The Boone occurrence changed the lay of the land, and the Yankees' resources gave them the capability to do what no one else could do," Lucchino said. "But you have to recognize or at least give them credit for their aggressiveness and for going out and making it happen.

"But they still have to beat us on the field. We're not going around the corner to hide. Maybe we'll test the old adage that good pitching beats good hitting every time."

Lucchino said he had no regrets about the Red Sox' failed attempts to trade for Rodriguez and that he doubted the Red Sox could challenge the Yankees' trade with a grievance. "I don't know the full details of the deal; we'll certainly inquire into them," Lucchino said. "But I certainly expect that the deal will go through."

For the Yankees, the trade fills a hole at third base but creates one at second, where Enrique Wilson and Miguel Cairo would presumably be the leading candidates to start. In dealing Soriano, the Yankees would give up a two-time All-Star who in 2002 became the first second baseman in the major leagues to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases in the same season. He repeated the feat last year.

But Soriano is a free swinger who can be exploited by better pitchers, and he played miserably in the postseason, striking out prodigiously and being benched for Game 5 of the World Series. The Yankees flirted with the idea of shifting him to the outfield, and signed Lofton to take over his role as leadoff man.

Adding Rodriguez will give the Yankees a thunderous middle of the lineup: Rodriguez, Jason Giambi and Sheffield combined for 127 homers last season. Rodriguez is also a charismatic figure who presumably would renew his friendship with Jeter. The two had been close early in their careers, and though the relationship was strained in 2001 after Rodriguez criticized Jeter in a magazine interview, the two filmed a commercial together this off-season.

Soon, Rodriguez will defer to Jeter on the field, moving a few steps to his right and hoping that by playing third base in the Bronx he will win his first World Series ring and Jeter will win his fifth.